Wonder
by loveislouder94
Summary: Bella was a little crazy, and Andy was quiet and defiant. Narcissa, she was somewhere in between. Together, they three were a tangled mess, clashing and grinding and never quite getting along. The Black Sisters explored.
1. Narcissa

**Author's Note: I'm trying to experiment with a different style of writing here, and I'm not sure how I'm doing. For now, this is a one-shot, but it might become a three- parter, one for each Black sister. I hope you like it, and any reviews would be greatly appreciated.**

**Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not, and sadly never will, belong to me. I make no profit from this story (unless you count a possible improvement in my writing.) **

She could be an Olympic sprinter, she runs so fast. And yet, she runs so very slow. It's not the speed that matters, but the distance. So that when she finally skids to a halt, heart pounding, eyes watering, legs quaking, she knows. It doesn't matter where she is, because she's somewhere that isn't _here_.

It doesn't matter that she can still hear them shouting, and she knows they'll never stop. Their words are arrows, poison tipped and dangerous. They tear through each other, they tear through her, and they tear through Bella and Andy, too. Bella was a little crazy, and Andy was quiet and defiant. One was their parents pride and joy, the other the bane of their existence. Narcissa, she was somewhere in between. Together, they three were a tangled mess, clashing and grinding and never quite getting along. She thinks there's something wrong there, because aren't they sisters? Aren't they family? Family is supposed to mean safety and comfort and learning but she thinks maybe she sees it wrong. She sees furious words and blazing eyes, deceiving laughter and slamming doors. She sees endless tears and unspoken fears and she wants to scream but she's not sure how.

And she keeps going through all the chaos because it's all she knows how to do. Her heart is breaking, shattering, splintering, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter anymore because she's here and then she's gone and what more is there than that?

What matters less than that? What is there besides that? She used to wonder, oh how she used to wonder – the world was so wide and big and wonderful, and they'd told her it was her oyster. But she's older now. She knows better now, better to than to believe in red rimmed eyes and tired smiles. Better than to believe in a world that's only going to let you down.

Black is her name, or it was, once upon a time. Until she shed it, and all its connotations, with two simple words: "I do." She doesn't regret them, of course she doesn't. She can't, because he is all she has now and she's so scared, because something so fragile and tenuous can't be used to define her because what if it breaks and then she's _gone_?

She'd come so close to fading away, like a picture that had lost its sheen, sinking slowly into nothing. Black was her name, and black was who and what she was. Black was the coffee she drunk every morning – a bitter taste that grew inside her. Vicious, yet comforting in its familiarity. Black was the cloud that followed her around everywhere she went – sometimes it was transparent and wispy, as though a gust of wind could blow it away. (_But no wind could rid her of this. Only she could see it, and only she could fight it.)_ Sometimes it was so dark, so heavy, it was a physical burden. She walks with a slouch because of a cloud no one else can see. She feels as though she weighs a hundred kilos, and why should she have to get up, have to participate in all the mundane activities of day to day life, when no one else is carrying a cloud like hers?

She watches them all, as they smile, in spite of everything. A wave of hatred rises up inside of her and she embraces it, because feeling hate is better than feeling nothing.

Her son, her precious son – if she's done one thing she can be proud of in all her years, she knows it's having him. Lucius looked at her, holding the tiny bundle, and for the first time she saw something other than a smirk on his face, and it irritated her. He was supposed to be unshakable, forever aloof and unreachable. Because if she couldn't reach him, then he couldn't reach her. If he couldn't reach her, no one could – they were cloistered, but safe, and being lonely didn't really matter if safety was what she got in return.

"It's our baby, Cissy!"

"Yes." She tries to smile, but she's so damn scared, and she's so not ready for this.

* * *

And then He came back, and she felt like Alice in Wonderland all over again, with her world turned on its head. How much more of this could she take?

He was in her house - they were in her house - sweeping about, leaving trails of death and destruction and darkness in their wake. And the little girl rises us inside her when she begins to wonder - was it worth it? Is anything worth this?

People are dying, all over the world. People are dying, in her _basement_. This is wrong, so very wrong. This is her domain, yet she creeps around like a mouse, like a servant. She's so tired, she's so scared, her patience is s t r e t c h i n g to its limits and when it snaps she's not sure what will be left.

Supposedly, they fight for purity. To erase all the mud, so they might be clean, untainted, free of dirt and those unwanted smears of foreign blood. She doesn't feel clean. She feels more dirty and less human with each passing day.

She has a tiny spark of hope, one she dare not speak aloud, nor even think, for He might hear, and then where would she be? But that hope is just a boy, a boy not unlike her own. She does not allow herself to dream of a time beyond this, because dreams are fragile things and she's had more than enough of fragility. And then...

With a single word (_Expelliarmus!_) He is gone, he is dead. The war has ended, but it took with it some part of herself, some part that she's never going to get back.

She'd wanted something more than this, she'd found something less, and it took her twenty long years to realise that all she ever needed was something _different._


	2. Andromeda

**Author's Note: Here's part two. Thank you enormously to everyone who reviewed part one, I really truly appreciate it: L.A.H.H. misswhiteblack, princess(dot)of(dot)marauders, brenners and Plate Captain. I don't like this one as much as the first one, but it's the best I could come up with...**

She's a bit like Rapunzel, she thinks. Only her tower isn't one of bricks and stone, but of prejudice and tradition. It might not be a physical thing, something she can touch and feel and _know _of its presence, but that matters not. It is there in the carefully made up faces of he mother and sisters. A powdered mask which cracks, as all veils are wont to do, to reveal tear stained faces and badly tamed resentment. It is there in the icy silences at the dinner table. A tenuous truce, a fragile coating – just as likely to collapse under the weight of so many words (or perhaps, a lack thereof) than to survive.

She can't take this anymore. She's had enough. Enough! _Enough. _It's all lies and false words. Untruths crowd her at every turn. She's living an illusion, and illusions are fine so long as no one can see through them. They allow for some semblance of happiness, some semblance of normality, a tiny piece of the unstained reputation we imagine in everybody else, and wish for ourselves. This illusion though, is one she can see through. She's always been able to see through it, no matter how much she wished she couldn't.

Because even when they were pretending, filling the gaping void of family secrets with trivial pieces of nothing, it made her sick. The surface showed something respectable, something desirable, even. The surface was wealth enough to provide for ten families for a century. It was the cleanest, most elegant house on the street, the many House Elves to do all the work. It was the designer clothes, sparkling diamonds and successful parties. It was, most of all, the outer layer – nothing more.

Beneath that, buried so deep even she sometimes found it hard to distinguish from everything else, was the truth. The truth was a mother who cared for her daughters, but couldn't show it. Druella Black was not suited to motherhood, nor had she ever claimed to be. She was cold and distant, and treated her offspring as if they were her possessions, pawns in a game. The truth was a father who acted as an eternal peacekeeper, and eternally failed. After each failure, he would reach for the bottle, and find oblivion. The truth was a sadistic daughter who was wild and out of control. The truth was a rose among a sea of thorns, a girl desperate for escape. The truth was blonde and somewhere in between. The truth was harsh and inescapable.

* * *

The smooth mahogany table was far too big for this family of five, but perhaps it was fitting. The distance between each place was a physical representation of the hairline fractures that divided them all.

"The Malfoy family will be attending our party this weekend, girls. Be sure to make a good impression. That Lucius might just make one of you a good wife. Wouldn't that be nice, dear?" The last word was a cruel barb, a sweet endearment reversed.

Other than a tensing of the hand that held his fork, her husband gave no indication he had heard.

"I'll have no need of a husband. Why would I, when all my time will be devoted to the dark Lord and his cause. One day, we shall be free of Mudbloods, and their brief stain on wizarding history will have been forgotten." Bella hadn't changed one iota from her days as a young girl.

"Something wrong, Andromeda?"

"Of course not, mother," the middle child replied, raising hr eyes quickly, before ducking behind her curtain of brown hair once more. She held her tongue and closed her eyes, knowing she must not speak.

* * *

Where do you run when there's no where else to go? When you're facing a great big brick wall that's not going to break, no matter how hard you huff and puff. No three little pigs can beat this, and the big bad wolf is right around the corner. Only maybe what no one realised was that the biggest danger was never what you couldn't see coming around the corner, but the darkness that always lurked within. The cold monster you were too scared to acknowledge.

She scares herself, sometimes. There's so much she doesn't understand, so many mysteries she's never going to unravel, so many things for which she remains in the dark. It's not the darkness that scares her, though. It's the fact that while she's vulnerable, blind to everything around her, the big bad wolf of her childhood could spring at her from anywhere.

She scares herself, because her past is something she's never going to escape, no matter how hard she tries. She was so naïve in her youth, so blissfully ignorant. She believed that the moment she turned seventeen, the moment she stepped through that darkened doorway for the last time, it was over. She was free. The witch no longer patrolled her tower, and she could climb to safety. Reality wasn't like that. Reality wasn't like that at all.

She wanted to be free, but she hadn't realised that her freedom came with a price. Like it or not, that place, those people, were a permanent part of her. They were the terrifying dreams which woke her in a cold sweat, even once she had become a mother herself. She'd thought freedom meant escape from them, escape from her memopries, escape from everything. She thought it meant **stability** and happiness and the formation of all she'd ever wanted. Freedom was something she had to accept she'd never truly find.

Ted wasn't a classic knight, riding an exquisite white horse and sweeping her off her feet. He was handsome, in an unconventional sort of way. His nose was a bit too small, and his mouth a bit too big, but that didn't matter to her. He was a Hufflepuff, and to top it off, Muggle-born. Her parents definitely wouldn't approve, yet somehow that just made it all the more exciting.

* * *

They weren't the stuff of fairytales, not really. she's a bit like Rapunzel, and she's a bit like the three little pigs and he's a big like her Prince Charming, but really, there's a bit of fairytale in all of us. We just don't all get our happy ending. Maybe no one does. Maybe a happy ending isn't living happily ever after, with not a care in the world. Maybe it's caring _too _much. This isn't Belle's story, or Aurora's. this is _their _story, his and hers, and they'll turn the page together.


	3. Bellatrix

**Author's Note: Here it is - the final part. It's taken me a while to finish it, I know. These were (and are) pieces that I really wanted to have completed and be able to say, "I'm proud to have written these." I don't think I can say that, they're certainly not as good as I've hoped, but they're definitely better than the nonsensical drivel I used to produce. Despite that, Bellatrix is rather OOC here, so apologies for that. Thank you immensely to everyone who has read, favourited alerted or reviewed this! :)**

Her smile says it all, really. The corners of her mouth curve sharply upward like blades of whose damage she is not aware. Her lips are thin and cracked from where she bites down on them, hard. Her teeth are pointed and pearly white – never let it be said that Bellatrix bit off more than she could chew. That smile stabs fear into the heart of even the most brave. That smile is a taunt (aren't you brave enough to fight me?). That smile is a plea (won't you notice me, my Lord?). That smile is the look of one so blinded by devotion, she sees nothing else.

Some might argue that Azkaban stole her sanity from her, but in reality, all shreds of goodness that might have existed had dissipated long before then. Azkaban did nothing to help her, of course. A fair chunk of her life she'd spent in prison, trapped without her Master, without her wand, without any reason to keep going, bar revenge.

She was like a caged animal, beating desperately against the bars of her cell. But in the end, she stopped fighting. They ensnared you, those recollections - the deepest, darkest parts of yourself, played like a film, over and over again, until they consumed you. Until one day, you woke up, and something was different. Something had snapped, never to be fully mended.

She is lost, and she can no longer tell one cage from another. Her cell, dark and echoing with emptiness, and her mind, equal in its darkness. She is a perpetual prisoner, and it scares her, but fear is something she cannot show.

They think she is mad. In a way, she is. But in a way, she is also more sane than all of them. Her mind is chaotic. Wonderfully, marvellously, delightfully chaotic. It moves lightning fast, and agonisingly slow.

She's never told anyone, and she never will, but her favourite story is not one by Beedle the Bard, or any other magical author. No, she prefers Alice in Wonderland. It was written by a Muggle, which automatically stained its reputation, but truth be told, Bellatrix has a soft spot for the Red Queen. They're quite similar and (dare she think it?) that's not such a bad thing.

She has so much power, the Red Queen with her enormous head and thoughtless executions. They each have their phrases:

"Off with his head! Off with her head! Off. With. Their. HEADS!"

"Avada Kedavra!"

With those simple words, their casual little commands, Death comes calling. This, at least, she can control.

They say love is all sparks and fire and passion and safety, but she's never felt anything quite like that. She's felt lust, she knows that much. In the early days they hardly spoke, she and Rodolphus. They were all excitement, fumbling hands and stolen kisses and that was all she needed. Nothing else mattered – she felt so very daring, so very _powerful_ right there and then.

Before she knew it, she was caught in a web of a different sort. This was a web of hunger, of darkness, of endless life and inevitable death, so smooth and stealthy that one never realised they were trapped before it was too late. But Bella never felt trapped. She felt enriched, energised. _This _was her purpose. When she finally received that long awaited Mark, that black tattoo of allegiance, she threw back her head and she laughed. Her voice was harsh and rough, and echoed with the hollow joy of one who brings death. Another Wicked Witch had been born.

She dances on their graves, spins and twists and twirls faster and faster and faster until she can almost forget why she's there at all. And when reality returns, all blood and death and power and _emotions, _for once it's not so bad. She carries her memories with her like a talisman and they protect her, those gossamer strands of past, present and possibility.

She's quite mad to put it bluntly, and she always puts things bluntly. No point hiding behind lies and sugar coated smiles. If childhood taught her anything, it taught her that.

Because she knows that he's the Lord, but despite everything she holds onto the hope that one day she'll be his lady.

There's a thousand tonnes of nitrogen packed into her body, and the fuse is sparked. It burns, getting smaller and smaller and smaller until she can't take it anymore. She's going to explode, with all her mindless rage and the faded rubble of potential trust never built. This is it. She's the last one left. This is her chance to _shine _like the star she might have been. And so the duel begins - incensed, unstoppable mother against mad, determined warrior. She _has _to win. She _will _win, because she's Bellatrix Lestrange, and she always gets what she wants.

And she sees the green light coming, knows the end is near, and she feels not a trickle of fear. She lets out a final, triumphant cackle, laughing at the world – she just lovelove_loved _this sad, tragic, somewhat loony existence.

* * *

They were the sisters Black, not the Brothers Grimm. They never wrote fairytales, or duelled with monsters. Some could say they _were _the monsters. They were the closest of young girls and the most distant of adults. They were the purest spark of light, and the most poisoned blanket of evil. They were all that and more, once upon a time.


	4. Chapter 4

This isn't sunshine and lollipops

Where are your rainbows, little girl?

Where are they?

This is not a perfect little world, _darling_

This is hearts of glass

Breaking, shattering, s p l i n t e r i n g

Before your very eyes

This is words that burn and scar

And oh so suddenly

You'd brave those sticks and stones

If it meant escape from **this**

****

**

* * *

**

But you're trapped, don't you know?

This is your tower, _princess_

There's no way out

Let's be honest, for a moment…

Do you think you can do that?

Shed your cloak

Of _charming_ little lies

And tell the **truth**

* * *

If you had the chance to run,

Would you take it?

One leap, one jump…

And you'd be f a l l i n g

Into…what?

_Sweetheart, _you don't know

You're not strong enough

To take that leap of **faith**

* * *

Dare to think, will you please?

Because maybe being here

Is good enough for **now**


End file.
